DotGNU and Mono Continue

saurik writes "After what has been a strange few weeks of converse between the DotGNU and Mono teams (including a small PR SNAFU that involved the banning of a member from the DotGNU mailing list), DotGNU has now announced that they will be forming a partnership with Portable.NET." Frankly I like that there are 2 efforts going on. Maybe one will succeed.

Re:Why???

[JanneM]

I know this is a trite argument, but it is appropriate (and no, I'm not trying to flame anybody, or even single you out or anything):

If you really think another way is the way to go, please start doing it. You don't even need to be a programmer yourself; write up a paper detailing the failings of the current efforts and propose a better way. Disseminate this text, and persuade other coders to join in and implement it. Even if you do not succeed in getting your project started, your work will not be wasted as your analysis will be helpful in guiding the current projects.

The people working on Mono, DotGNU and Portable.NET are all doing it because they believe their project is the right way to go about it. Any productive feedback - in the form of a design document or a competing project - is very helpful for all involved. A random 'I don't like this', on the other hand, is likely to be ignored.

/Janne

Re:Interesting effort...

[The Mayor]

Except that the JVM currently runs on most platforms. Gnome, to my knowledge, is Unixen-only, with some parts of GTK ported to Windows. As such, the JVM can be viewed as something that breaks a desktop dependancy.

Variety and Freedom of choice, my friends!

[famazza]

Yes, my friends, fight against each other. If you don't agree the way a project is running, leave the project and make another one by your self!

That's the spirit of Variety. That what keep our Freedom of Choices. I like to choose Window Maker, and I also like that my pal prefers Gnome. That's the variety that I love to see!

Imagine a world where there are no differences, where all window managers look the same! This sux! I prefer to see a good fight, I prefer to see people getting out of a project and building their own. But I'm sad about that horrible happening about baning (too sad...)

Of course, freedom is hard to manage. Ditatorial government are much easier than a real democracy. Be fair is much more difficult, look all around is much more difficult, but IMHO is much much much better!

Let's fight and build several .NET projects. Can I see a third project in the horizon? Maybe I'm right, maybe it's just a dream, maybe everybody fits into dotGNU and Mono. That's ok too, the point is, we still have a choice!


FREEEEEEDOOOMM!!!

Re:Doesn't this help to validate Microsoft?

[telbij]

Yes, but Microsoft's strategy here was perfect, because they know it's too much of a gamble for the open source community NOT to make an open source version of .net technology. Certainly if we did nothing Microsoft would have to work that much harder to gain universal acceptance of .NET, but if we have an open source alternative at least nobody has to be under the iron grip of MS. That's not too high a price to pay to avoid MS dominance even if it plays into their hands to an extent.

Re:I like this concept, however...

[Jason Earl]

Unfortunately Microsoft has all the leverage in this particular case because they control the client. We could come up with something a hundred times better than .NET and .NET would still win because the client bits of .NET will be on every new PC firmly embedded into Windows.

The Samba developers really have the right idea. Instead of creating a network file system and then trying to create a Windows client (which Microsoft could break at every .dll update) they instead took the route of emulating Windows servers. Even with a crufty protocol like SMB this turned out to be the easiest route. Microsoft doesn't want to break their own clients, and so they are limited in what they can really change.

One of these days Linux (or some other open system) might very well have enough client side market share that the Free Software folks could create a client side standard and actually have some weight behind it. The closest we have ever come was with browser based applications, and even that was marred by Netscape-isms and the even more overwhelming IE-isms that are cropping up more recently.

Free Software is getting closer, however. My guess is that it is only a matter of time.

Microsoft is winning

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

With .NET , Microsoft successfully managed in a very short period of time to :

Make the community disperse its efforts on copying what is little more than vaporware

Make the community look like a bunch of childish "I can do that too" people.

The only thing that comes to my mind when I look at the mono and dotGNU projects is "monkey see, monkey do". One of the projects can't even come up with an innovative name for itself. Well, I'm sorry but copying .NET is just dumb and it plays in favor of Microsoft, who looks like the real innovators that legions of unimaginative free-software geeks always try to copy.

In short, the community has to stop copying and being toyed with by Microsoft, and begin innovating and proving that there are much better things than what Microsoft comes up with.

Re:Interesting effort...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, the irony So Swing now runs at acceptable speed because it uses non-java code.

Another reason...

[Chester K]

...it's hard for people in business to Open Source seriously.

This is no different than the Gnome vs. KDE debate, or Debian vs. RedHat, or hell, even Linux vs. BSD. We fight amongst ourselves so much that we can't present a unified front against (much more organized) Closed Source efforts.

Will somebody at one of these .NET-clone projects get off their high horse and just merge the projects together? All this stupid in-fighting just goes to show that Microsoft has nothing to fear from Open Source.

Why all the confusion for so long?

[dwlemon]

Mono is a GNU port of C# and the CLI runtime. What people think this has to do with authentication, I have no idea.

Porting a language means making it available to another platform. With mono, you can develop C# on gnu/linux. Why is this such a terrible and confusing thing to so many slashdotters? Is the availability of another development platform a bad thing? The only thing that would really bug me is if the KDE team decides to write their own separate implementation. The fact that Mono will be tied to Gnome is iffy, but what are you gonna do? Gnome has to make strides of some kind or another to stand out.

When Gnome says they have customers, I believe them.

I don't give a shit if my Mono applications don't even work on Windows. I'd like an alternative to Java that doesn't feel like a toy.

I don't know if dotGNU is needed. I guess if it means I only need one username and password to log into any sites that have accepted their standard, then that's just super.

But wether or not I am going to be able to go to Amazon.com and identify myself with a dotGNU login, I don't know. Frankly, I don't care.

Mono interests me, dotGNU doesn't.

Re:Why???

[RevAaron]

For me, as a developer, .NET isn't about having "internet services." It's about easy interoperability between languages. I program in Smalltalk (and some LISP), and while I've not had a hard time finding the changesets (read: "libraries") to do what I need (db access, &c), I'm sure one day I'll run into a wall and have to reimplement functionality that has been already done in another language. .NET would allow me to use a lib written in C++ or Python in a version of Smalltalk or LISP or whatever language I feel would be appropriate targeted for the .NET CLI. It means I can do this easily, without having to hack together some IPC or write a C wrapper for the functionality in question.

This has a lot of potential, and I see "internet services" as a small part of it, at least in the way it effects me.

Then again, I'll probably never bother using it, unless there's Smalltalk and CL implementations as good as or better than the ones I use now. :)

Joined forces

[andres32a]

"Frankly I like that there are 2 efforts going on. Maybe one will succeed." Well in a sense it is good that the projects have comed together specially when the outcome seems so young. Later on when the technology does become usable there will be other similar projects even based on the original.

Re:Interesting effort...

[Xiphoid Process]

The JVM is as much of a "needless desktop dependency" as Gnome is.

Re:I like this concept, however...

[acroyear]

Actually, as I stated before, Sun has their own environment they're developing, Sun ONE, and I belive it was announced before .NET. .NET is a reactive strike against Sun just as its key language, C#, is a reactive strike against Java.

Re:Interesting effort...

[The Mayor]

Hold on a second. The architecture Swing uses *is* good. The performance, pre-v1.4, did suck, but that was because Swing was pure-Java. In v1.4, Swing finally utilizes native code to handle optimizations for elements like scrolling. Consequently, jdk1.4 feels much faster, subjectively matching the speed of native GUIs.

Mouse wheel support? It's in there [sun.com]. Check v1.4 of the JDK.

Accessibility (support for the disabled, but in a PC way)? It's in there. Check out the Java Accessibility API [sun.com].

I'm afraid I don't have any information on how one can utilize the native OS theme for colors and such. Do you have a reference to a bug/feature request in Sun's bug tracker on this one? It may be in v1.4, but I simply don't know. I'd bet it's not, though.

My point is just that you should really give v1.4 a chance. It's quite nice, despite changing a few of the APIs such that many v1.3 programs must be ported (very few changed, but just enough that it's not a simple copy-and-run for programs like Forte).

Re:Another reason...

[gmhowell]

OTOH, by infighting, the end products are arguably better than if there had been only competition against M$, Sun, etc.

As with most things in life, a balance must be struck. Yes, Gnome and KDE should have differences. Differences of design philosophy, goals, implementation... As long as they keep in mind the larger goal: world domination.

:)

But seriously, there is no way to have a discussion with M$ regarding technical merits. And so what if they get heated? Some of the best discussions I've had have been heated.

If everyone's itch were solved by one product, we'd all be using M$ Bob. They aren't, so we don't.

People who matter take Open Source seriously. And in the end, IBM (among others) are a voice that people still listen to, even if the face of M$.

I do think that some of the fighting (and I went back and read the threads on that mailing list) are pointless, and much along the lines of "I got my feelings hurt". And that is pure bullshit that accomplishes nothing. And yes, *that* sort of argument doesn't look good. Thankfully, most arguments are mostly substantive.

Re:Why all the confusion for so long?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know if dotGNU is needed. I guess if it means I only need one username and password to log into any sites that have accepted their standard, then that's just super.

But wether or not I am going to be able to go to Amazon.com and identify myself with a dotGNU login, I don't know. Frankly, I don't care.

In 2 or 3 years, when you go to www.BuyStuff.com and want to order something it will ask you for authentification of some sort.

It WILL happen.

Now what would you rather have to do, go to Microsoft's web site and get a Passport account, or CHOOSE your authenticator? With DotGNU, any company will be able to set up authentification service (only some will be truly trusted). Without it, MS (or whoever executes Hailstorm) will own you.

Re:Another reason...

[rking]

Think of how much more powerful the Open Source movement would be if we didn't spend half our time playing politics with other Open Source projects and instead spent that time coding.

How about if you were to stop complaining about how other people choose to spend their own time and instead you spend your time coding?